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Are we to think of the indivisible phase of the soul and the
divided as making one thing in a coalescence; or is the
indivisible in a place of its own and under conditions of its
own, the divisible being a sequent upon it, a separate part of
it, as distinct as the reasoning phase is from the unreasoning?
The answer to this question will emerge when we make plain the
nature and function to be attributed to each.
The indivisible phase is mentioned [in the passage of Plato]
without further qualification; but not so the divisible; "that
soul" we read "which becomes divisible in bodies"- and even this
last is presented as becoming partible, not as being so once for
all.
"In bodies": we must then, satisfy ourselves as to what form of
soul is required to produce life in the corporeal, and what there
must be of soul present throughout such a body, such a completed
organism.
Now, every sensitive power- by the fact of being sensitive
throughout- tends to become a thing of parts: present at every
distinct point of sensitiveness, it may be thought of as divided.
In the sense, however, that it is present as a whole at every
such point, it cannot be said to be wholly divided; it "becomes
divisible in body." We may be told that no such partition is
implied in any sensations but those of touch; but this is not so;
where the participant is body [of itself insensitive and
non-transmitting] that divisibility in the sensitive agent will
be a condition of all other sensations, though in less degree
than in the case of touch. Similarly the vegetative function in
the soul, with that of growth, indicates divisibility; and,
admitting such locations as that of desire at the liver and
emotional activity at the heart, we have the same result. It is
to be noted, however, as regards these [the less corporeal]
sensations, that the body may possibly not experience them as a
fact of the conjoint thing but in another mode, as rising within
some one of the elements of which it has been participant [as
inherent, purely, in some phase of the associated soul]:
reasoning and the act of the intellect, for instance, are not
vested in the body; their task is not accomplished by means of
the body which in fact is detrimental to any thinking on which it
is allowed to intrude.
Thus the indivisible phase of the soul stands distinct from the
divisible; they do not form a unity, but, on the contrary, a
whole consisting of parts, each part a self-standing thing having
its own peculiar virtue. None the less, if that phase which
becomes divisible in body holds indivisibility by communication
from the superior power, then this one same thing [the soul in
body] may be at once indivisible and divisible; it will be, as it
were, a blend, a thing made up of its own divisible self with, in
addition, the quality that it derives from above itself.
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